Featured

jewel bush: A lesson in self-determination

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Back in February, a sense of grief swept the entire New Orleans community when the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament, a Pennsylvania-based order, announced it would close the all-girls Xavier University Preparatory High School at the end of the school year due to uncertain financial sustainability. As many prepared to mourn the death of Prep as yet another failed black institution, the school’s alumni base wasn’t quite ready to deliver the eulogy. They couldn’t bear to see St. Katharine Drexel’s dream wither. They fought, fundraised and incorporated to preserve the school.

opinion

jewel bush: Self-preservation in the age of carnage

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We live in an age of carnage where we have a front row seat to view tragedy –- domestic and foreign — on loop via stills of blood splattered sidewalks and footage of the resulting chaos. As we struggle to make sense of the escalating violence in the world, add the Boston Marathon bombings to the grisly list of sadistic markers of our generation. Refreshing and scrolling and surfing for more and the latest details can be consuming. While we all want to be up on breaking news, it is crucial that we don’t overdose as we ingest these oft-distressing reports. We are no good to those closest to us if we are emotionally spent.

arts, books and music

jewel bush: I Am Looking At Music

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I’ve always been in awe and a bit intimidated by poetry. Bards have the gift for defining the abstract and manipulating the literal into newfangled perspectives. They illuminate the political with their verses and stanzas and wordplay. Poetry can be lyrical, yet still. Profound and pretty.

opinion

jewel bush: An open letter to armchair “activists”

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Dear armchair activist,

The root of the word activism is “act.”

If you are not doing something in a tangible, meaningful way, to impact social, political, economic or cultural change, then you are not an activist. Advocate, perhaps. Activist, you are not. If the extent of your “activism” is regurgitating factoids, trolling online discussion forums, retweeting commentary by intellectuals on Twitter or reposting, sharing and liking stories on Facebook, then you are not an activist. Agitator, maybe.

Congress

jewel bush: Alone and afraid, awaiting his fate

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Denis Chirinos-Avila is one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States, but the right word to describe him is not “alien” or “illegal” or any other common epithet used to refer to those who live and work here without paperwork. Denis Chirinos-Avila is scared. The 27-year-old construction worker has lived day in and day out in a paralyzing fear that his open secret would be exposed, that he would be deported away from the life he has established in New Orleans for more than seven years. Would he be questioned in the grocery store? Or on the way to work?

Featured

jewel bush: Sarah T. Reed senior scores high marks for organizing efforts to save his school

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Last summer, New Orleans teenager Myron Miller traveled to the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Derided by segregationists as the “Communist Training School,” burned down and forced to close multiple times by racists over the years, the educational facility in the shadow of the Smokey Mountains has a long tradition of training activists including such historical figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. There, in the Seeds of Fire youth camp, Miller learned the language and methodologies to describe years of work he had already been doing in the city – organizing his community in an emotional and controversial battle to save Sarah T. Reed High School. “I never knew what an organizer was, but I was actually already doing it,” Miller said. “It was a life changing experience for me to attend Highlander.

opinion

jewel bush: Who was there for Terrilynn?

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Coming of age in a party town like New Orleans, there have been countless nights where I have been hanging out with buddies and drinking has been involved. Whether we drove to the party or club together, we always made sure everyone made it home safely. We never left a friend alone at the end of the night – sober or otherwise. Our friend code wouldn’t allow it. The rules required calls or text messages letting the group know you were in.

arts, books and music

jewel bush: Sula’s challenge

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The motif of loss luxuriously weaves its way in and out of Sula. Morrison describes loss of life, loss of friendship and loss of love so deliciously you taste it, you crave it and if you’re not brave enough to want it for yourself, you long to be close enough to the fire of loss that you feel the heat but don’t get burned.

church

jewel bush: A Hail Mary for my alma mater

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As a graduate of Xavier University Preparatory School, I long dreamed that if I ever had a daughter she would attend “The Prep” like I did. This will likely never happen. Last week, the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament, a Pennsylvania-based religious order, announced that my alma mater would close at the end of the school year. “The figures do not reflect that the future of the Prep will be financially sustainable,” stated a letter I received in the mail on Monday, February 25. St.